Saturday, April 25, 2009

One-Year Arrest Update on Prakashanand — He Must Be Praying for a Miracle

File under: Gurus Doin' Time, Hands Where They Don't Belong and The Siddhi of PR

By a former resident of Barsana Dham

[Ed.note: This is the first of what we hope will be many stories written by the readers of this blog. This first piece about Prakashaka BOOM, longtime Gp target Kreepalu's agent in America, is excellent and sets the bar quite high at the onset. If you'd like to have your say about your ex-guru, drop us a line at tips@guruphiliac.org].

25 April 2009 — Last year on this day, Swami Prakashanand Saraswati was cooling his heels in a prison in Alexandria, Virginia. Today he is obsessively compulsively flying back and forth from India to Austin; perhaps trying to shore up his life before he returns to jail — permanently.

Last year, on Thursday, April 24, 2008, after exiting an international flight at Washington Dulles International Airport, Prakashanand was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals from the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force and arrested on 20 counts of indecency with a child. From that afternoon until Saturday afternoon, he was in the custody of law enforcement officers. If justice is served, he will spend the rest of his life in their company.

However, for the past year he has been free on one million dollars bail for the case involving two female minors. He also has a $10 million bond posted by one of his wealthy followers to ensure that he shows up for pre-trial hearings and the trial. The bond was posted so that he could receive his passport back. One stipulation of his bond is that he cannot step one foot back into the multi-million dollar ashram he built southwest of Austin with followers’ money. When in Austin, he stays two miles down the road at a home owned by one of his followers.

He has spent a considerable amount of time and money trying to move heaven and earth to get back into his “magical kingdom.” But so far Hays Judge Charles R. Ramsay has said no way two times. Now Prakashanand is trying his luck with the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals.

He also appears to be fighting like hell to postpone the actual trial for as long as humanly possible. In fact, for the past year he has not had one single pre-trial hearing. In the past year, Prakashanand’s case has been set and reset eight times, according to an article published Friday by Eric Dexheimer, an Austin American-Statesman journalist following the case. He wrote: “Prakashanand’s case has been winding through the court system at an unusually slow pace.” The Hays DA said in an email to him: “It is true that cases typically are not reset or canceled this many times in my experience.”

Although the Hays County DA has not revealed why the hearings have been delayed, rumors indicate that the excuses include Prakashanand claiming illness and hiring new lawyers (who then need time to get up to speed on the case).

The main reason is likely that he is praying for miracle: Hoping that his bad karma will all just go away.

You can be sure that Prakashanand is sparing no expense (of his followers’ donations) for the most aggressive legal defense. On one recent document submitted to the 3rd Court for his appeal there were seven lawyers cited. One of his lawyers brags on his firm’s website about his history of keeping accused murders and child molesters out of jail.

Since Prakashanand’s arrest, Barsana Dham has propagated much misinformation. Most notably, they have been telling followers and new parishioners that the women in the indictment are claiming sexual abuse by Prakashanand, because “they are angry at their parents” and “mad that they had to grow up in Barsana Dham.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The two women are, in fact, among the bravest people on the planet. They stood up to this man and his criminal behavior when so many others have left the organization quietly or turned a blind eye to the truth.

But Barsana Dham’s preachers and other higher-ups have not only committed lies of commission regarding this case. They have also omitted sharing several salient points including:

The Hays County Sheriff’s office conducted a criminal investigation before they arrested Prakashanand.

The Hays DA presented the case to a 12-member Grand Jury. This means that 12 citizens of Hays County heard the state’s case and agreed that there was enough evidence to indict Prakashanand of 20 counts of indecency with a child.

Four branches of the law were involved in Prakashanand’s arrest — which could have occurred in Austin, Texas: But didn’t.

Barsana Dham’s leadership calls former members “demons,” because they are speaking out about Prakashanand’s (and Barsana Dham’s other guru, Kripalu Maharaj’s) criminal behavior. The organization forbids current members to have any contact with them. Barsana Dham prefers its ex-members to just go away quietly — and, of course, has profited from people doing just that for decades.

Prakashanand’s lawyers are bending the truth on his filings, including the brief to the 3rd Court of Appeals.

The irony is that Prakashanand’s followers treat him as if he is God. So, why aren’t they asking themselves: How could God get himself into such a mess — and, even more telling, why can’t he gracefully get himself out?

A Childhood Hell In Chinmoyland

Tamm... depicts a charlatan who masqueraded as a god and convinced hundreds of thousands to worship him. Her parents were among the first disciples. Chinmoy arranged a "divine marriage" between a Yale-educated hippie and a single mother, then told them to practice abstinence. (Most disciples, however, were directed to remain single.) When Tamm's parents disobeyed and conceived her, Chinmoy invented a myth to explain her birth. He declared her the "Chosen One," a miracle child he'd selected to be his most devoted follower...

She also says the guru controlled his pupils by pitting them against one another. He created a caste system that allowed him to demote or promote members at will. He encouraged members to keep tabs on one another and turn in rule-breakers. Tamm says he once held a fundraiser where disciples paid $25 apiece to hear him describe their worst qualities. At one meditation session, he held a contest for the ugliest girl--a young member with a boil on her face won the distinction.

That's some crazy kind of karma, your "Chosen One" being the instrument of your life's true rendering. Sri Chinmoy clearly made the right choice in Jayanti Tamm.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Lynch Takes Assault On 1st Amendment to Kentucky

File under: The Siddhi of PR

David Lynch's plan to get his religion into your kids' schools has moved into its post-concert phase. Money made at the concert will now flow to the various regional "peace palaces" of the TM™ org so that efforts to indoctrinate your children can be made on a local basis, including in the state of Kentucky:

Part of the initiative includes funding from the David Lynch Foundation for 1,000 kids in the Central Kentucky area...

In Lexington, anyone can learn the TM technique at the Maharishi Peace Palace, which offers free introductory lectures as well as further instruction to learn a seven-step program.

And a whole lot of "encouragement" to open your wallets to pay for it all.

And that's the whole plan. Raise money to introduce TM™ to children to develop paying customers and adherents to what is CLEARLY a religion.

If TM™ meditation can be in schools, why not Zen, or Vipassana, which is clearly more well-suited to the task of being secular. TM™'s tireless efforts to secularize their ideology is only a few microns thick, folks, covering up what is essentially one grandiose man's grandiose vision of a world ruled by kings (rajas) who will mete out Vedic law, but only as it was interpreted by him. In this world, we will all literally be bowing to pictures of the Maharishi!

Yeah, we know, it's effing crazy, but there are thousands of people who believe it, and those are the people who are trying to get TM™ into the head of as many children as they can.

Gp pal John Knapp has put out a call to the citizens of central Kentucky for any information they might be able to provide. Recently, he attempted to organize a web-meeting about TM™ in schools that was quashed by lawyers from the David Lynch Foundation. We encourage everyone to call their schools and raise a ruckus about this absolute assault on the First Amendment, and not just in Kentucky. TM™ is trying to get in schools from San Francisco to Rhode Island. It's likely that wherever there's a "Maharishi's Peace Palace," there's an effort to trojan their religion into your schools.

Update: For those who want to decide for themselves whether TM™ is a religion, check this out:

Maharishi is expressing this because He has felt a great opening in world consciousness. He now feels that He is ready and able to train as many governors as come forward to be real channels for the decent of Heaven on Earth, Sat Yuga. He wants to bring all the old time people to a mature state of knowledge and experience. He wants to train us to create for ourselves and for the world from within ourselves, and to know by Being, and to create from Being, so that we are masters of our own destiny and the destiny of the world.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

HuffPo And RusSim Love TM™ In Schools

FIle under: The Siddhi of PR

Arianna Huffington, Russell Simmons, the surviving Beatles and wackjob film director David Lynch all want religion in your childrens' schools.

While we agree that a secularized form of meditation could benefit many kids around the country, TM™ meditation is a religion that arrives with a whole float of ideological assumptions about the world and the TM™ founder, the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Do whatever you can to resist these dilettantes from determining what religion your children are exposed to in the context of their public education (hint: it's supposed to be none.)

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Illin' Lama Getting Served

File under: Gurus Doin' Time and The Siddhi of PR

When we last had a visit from the "Lama," Michael Lyons, aka Mohan Singh, he was just put under a warrant for his arrest on sexual assault charges in the U.K. Two years and some change later, he's getting it like he gave it from the press and the prosecutor:

Michael Lyons, 51, styled himself as spiritualist Mohan Singh and victims were convinced he was linked to the Dalai Lama, it is alleged.

But in fact he is a 'sexual predator' who raped and assaulted new or potentially new followers that he found attractive, a jury was told.

Prosecutor Philip Katz QC said: "We say the defendant, calling himself Mohan Singh, is a sexual predator masquerading as a Guru and healer.

"We say he has been systematically raping and sexually assaulting those new recruits into his group who he found attractive."

For any readers who've been closer to Mohan than they wanted to be, a reporter from London's Daily Mail is asking for help:

By way of introduction, I'm a journalist with the Daily Mail newspaper in London.

I have read with interest the many posts on your website.

Could you pass on my details to any of Mohan's victims who have contacted you.

I would like to speak to them for a newspaper investigation into him. I have been covering the court case which is currently running at Wood Green Crown Court in London.

Any other leads for investigating Lyons would be welcome. I would be particularly keen to try and track down his former wife.

.... An appropriate name for your blog could have been Neti Neti.— Rama

While we understand that gurus are held sacred by many, they
are also public figures deserving of scrutiny. Our primary aim
is to inject a little humor into what can be an excessively
self-righteous enterprise, and to illustrate the primary truth that
no matter how divine their devotees believe them to be, gurus
poop on the same pot we do.